Hannah Arendt: Democracy and The Political

Author(s): SHELDON S. WOLIN

Source: Salmagundi , Spring-Summer 1983, No. 60, On Hannah Arendt (Spring-Summer
1983), pp. 3-19
Published by: Skidmore College

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40547750

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Hannah Arendt: Democracy
and The Political
BY SHELDON S. WOLIN

The question of democracy is not one that has received much

attention from those who have written about Hannah Arendt. This
omission seems understandable because Arendt herself never
systematically addressed the topic in any of her writings. Yet it is not
difficult to show that many of the major categories that compose and
distinguish her political outlook were either critical of or incompatible
with democratic ideas. This I believe to be the case with the distinction
on which her political ideals were grounded, the distinction between
"the political" and "the social." Her critical attitude toward democracy
rested on a correct intuition that the impulse of democracy has been
to override that distinction. For historically, democracy has been the
means by which the many have sought access to political power in the
hope that it could be used to redress their economic and social lot. The
"natural" state of society contains important distinctions of wealth,
birth, and education that are typically extended into political power.
Thus social power is translated into political power which is then used
to increase social power. Democracy is the attempt of the many to
reverse the natural cycle of power, to translate social weakness into
political power in order to alleviate the consequences of what is not
so much their condition as their lot-tery.
Democracy would also obliterate these Arendtian distinctions because
it wants to extend the broad egalitarianism of ordinary lives into public
life. It is at odds with the emphasis on authority, ambition, glory, and
superiority that figured so importantly in Hannah Arendt's conception
of authentic political action. It was not accidental that she excluded
the sentiments of fellow-feeling - compassion, pity, and love - from
the political realm, or, more important, that she was silent about

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 4 SHELDON S. WOLIN

"friendship" (so centra

basic to Hebraic and C
democratic sentiments
conception of action s
collective; its mode is co
audience of heroes but
In what follows I propo
strain in Arendt's thoug
study of totalitarianis
Human Condition, The
change is evident. It app
(1963) and more strikin
Republic (1969). While
a leftward position, sh
categories. Within limi
of reflecting upon the
Hannah Arendt's first
(1951), was completely
there seems to be no ne
should discuss democra
subject-matter and the
in the immediate afterm
the United Kingdom, t
and in a significant pa
universal theme that set
ordinary people everyw
and "dictatorship." Th
movies of the time con
nature of totalitarianis
of the political antith
between democratic fr
thought-control and m
of free political parties
one-party state with it
While it would be an
Totalitarianism reversed
to say that the work ado
by means of categories t
were deeply anti-democratic. One tradition was associated with
Nietzsche, the other with Tocqueville. A fundamental category of both

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Hannah Arendt: Democracy and The Political 5
traditions was the "mass." For Nietzsche democracy was primarily
political expression of the atomistic, unheroic, security-loving cultur
which had emerged after the defeat of the agonistic, aristocratic politi
culture of antiquity by the slave morality of Christianity. "The
democratic movement," Nietzsche wrote, "is not only the form of th
decay of political organization, but a form of the decay, namely,
diminution, of man, making him mediocre and lowering his value
Tocqueville, whose general influence on Arendt, particularly in
understanding of the founding of the American republic and of
nature of the French Revolution, has not been fully appreciated,
only anticipated Nietzsche's nostalgia for a politics on an heroic scale,
but was the first nineteenth-century theorist to revive the ancient no
that certain forms of tyranny might have a popular basis.3 Tocquevil
envisioned "an immense protective power," operating benignly rat
than brutally, that "hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultif
by "a network of pretty complicated rules" that "covers the whol
social life." Democratic "equality," Tocqueville held, "has prepare
men for all this," encouraging them to pursue "petty and banal
pleasures," to "exist in and for himself," isolated and politically
passive.4
The echoes of these writers can be heard in the main themes of
Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism. "... totalitarian movements,"
she wrote, "depended less on the structurelessness of a mass society
than on the specific conditions of an atomized and individualized
mass. . . ."5 "Mass man" was characterized by "isolation and lack
of normal social relationships" caused in part by "the breakdown of
the class system."6 Totalitarian movements, she continued, were built
on "sheer numbers" of "indifferent people. . . who never before had
appeared on the political scene."7 Totalitarian leaders, such as Hitler
and Stalin, "had the confidence of the masses" and enjoyed
"indisputable popularity."8 The triumph of totalitarian movements,
she concluded, shattered the "illusion" that the existence of
1 Cited in Tracy B. Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975), p. 201.
2 See, for example, Democracy in America, tr. George Lawrence (Garden City, New
York. 1969). d. 15.
3 A. Andrewes, The Greek Tyrants (London, 1956).
4 Democracy in America, p. 692.
5 The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951), p. 312.
6 Ibid. , pp. 310, 308.
7 Ibid., p. 305.
8 The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951), p. 301.

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 6 SHELDON S. WOLIN

"democracy" had been m

an active part and had p
In reality the majority
democracy could func
recognized by only a m
masses at all, it had res
of the indifferent and
was that while democratic
legal equality, they wer
are represented by gro
that is, where there wa
The Origins concluded
resolved to undertake a
history") that would incl
was bleak. "There are pl
over and destroy wher
She undertook that pro
and offered her concepti
ground for withstanding
would have prepared a r
that was inspired by th
with Nietzsche and Heid
a sketch of a political con
in the Platonic sense, a
Plato's, her ideal owed vir
slightly more to the hi
ideal. The intention behin
masses than the one whic
Although "mass society"
on the phenomenon of
and politics effected by
economic growth. These
idea of "the social"; and b
Marx, who symbolized
politics.
Arendt's conception of "the political" had several aspects. It signified
not a state or a society but a determinate public space, a forum, an
agora, set aside, jealously defended so that those men who wished to
9 Ibid., p. 306.
10 Ibid., pp. 438, 439.

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Hannah Arendt: Democracy and The Political 1
test themselves by the highest standards of excellence might com
by speech and action, in the presence of their peers. It was to be a
of lofty ambition, glory, and honor, unsullied by private inte
the material concerns in the larger society "outside": a politics of
rather than citizens, agonistic rather than participatory, encou
qualities that would enable men to stand out rather than to tak
of, share (participation = pars (part) + capio (seize)). It was a
combination of Periclean democracy, idealized so as to expunge the
democratic elements of law courts and assemblies, and an Homeric
assembly from which the merest suggestion that a Thersites might arise
to "quarrel with kings" (Iliad 2.211-78) had been removed.
It is difficult to exaggerate either the severity with which she drew
boundaries around the political in order to separate it from the banality
and low concerns of ordinary life, or the historical distortions which
had to be introduced in order to claim for her construct the authority
of the Greeks. Among the distortions she ignored the acute class
conflicts that were a familiar feature of the Greek city-states and had
generated continuous pressure for the broadening of citizenship and
for the enlargement of political access so that excluded social elements
might enjoy the benefits of political membership. As a result she gave
us a politics without the divisive conflicts that have presented the main
challenge to politicians, just as she had given us what was said to be
a Greek-inspired conception of action but without analyzing the vital
place accorded violence and war in Greek conceptions of the polis and
of noble action.
In the same bowdlerizing vein, she made no mention of the periodic
efforts, as early as the Solonic land reforms, to expand the meaning
of equality (insonomia) so as to include a socio-economic content and
not just an equality of formal legal rights.11 So insistent was she that
political equality had to be confined among the few that she tried to
maintain that the "real" meaning of equality as understood by the
Greeks had not to do with fair treatment or even with equal rights but
with a condition in which the individual was free because he was neither
a ruler (or superior) nor a subject (or inferior).12 In support of this
interpretation she claimed that "the whole concept of rule and being
ruled. . . was felt to be prepolitical and to belong to the private rather
11 See G. Vlastos, "bonomia," Classical Philology, Vol. XLI (1946), 65-83; J.W. Jones,
The Law and Legal Theory of the Greeks (Oxford, 1956), pp. 16-23, 84-90; M.M.
Austin and P. Vidal-Naquet, Economic and Social History of Ancient Greece: An
Introduction (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1977), pp. 24-26.
12 The Human Condition (Chicago, 1958), pp. 32-33.

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 8 SHELDON S. WOLIN

than the public sphere.

by Aristotle's familiar d
of the term, are all wh
ruled."14
The fragility of her ideal was underlined by the condition which it
required. A politics devoted to the production of memorable actions
had to be not only exclusive but subsidized. The ancient Athenians had
compromised their democracy by excluding slaves, resident aliens,
workers, and women, that is, practically the entire work force of the
polis. Arendt accepted this notion and dressed it out by adopting
Aristotle's justification that these human activities were "functions"
which embodied the metaphysical principle of "necessity," that is, they
were necessary to sustaining human life and, by extension, the collective
life of the polis. But because these forms of "labor" were bound
endlessly to produce and reproduce the means of life, and because the
fate of the products and services was to be consumed and thus to pass
away without trace, and because the laborer depended on employers
or masters, the activities were unfree, without choice or lasting
significance. Parenthetically, one might note that this contrast between
"freedom" and "necessity" was comparable to the one developed by
Marx, but, unlike Marx, Arendt wanted to preserve necessity rather
than develop a complex strategy, as Marx did, for exploiting it,
overcoming it, and consorting with it. For Arendt freedom resided
essentially in the political realm where men could exercise choice. In
her eyes, Marx's exaltation of labor, his claim that it should constitute
the principle around which society should be reorganized, represented
an inversion of the true hierarchy of values. It meant enshrining an
activity that was essentially mindless, routinized and repetitious in place
of political action with its drive for the unpredictable and memorable
deed. "The art of politics teaches men how to bring forth what is great
and radiant. . . Greatness. . . can only lie in the performance itself and
neither in its motivation nor its achievement."15 Labor, on the other
hand, entails a form of sociability that involves "the actual loss of all
awareness of individuality and identity." The "animal laborans" is
marked by "an incapacity for distinction and hence for action and
speech."16

13 Ibid., p. 32.
14 Politics Ill.xiii. 1283 b 45.
15 The Human Condition, p. 206.
16 Ibid., pp. 213, 215.

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Hannah Arendt: Democracy and The Political 9
The distinctive nature of the political or public realm was developed
by the contrasts which Arendt drew between it and the concept of "t
social." The latter signified all of the activities and relationships which
by nature, were "private." They included work and labor, love, se
family, and household. These, she contended, were matters that could
not withstand the glare of publicity that attends all political actio
without being distorted or perverted. Private things, such as labo
"material concerns, ' ' and "bodily functions, ' ' should remain "hidden. ' ' 1
The crisis of modernity is that the political realm has been invaded
by the social realm, especially by private economic interests and priva
values of consumption and pleasure. The most dangerous invader
the mass whose power has increased with the growth of conformi
The value of equality has been realized in the fact of sameness. Politic
has given way to administration as bureaucracies regulate daily life an
render it more uniform. The triumph of necessity, and of the lab
principle that embodies it, is realized in the form of a society dedicat
to the ignoble ideal of mere life. She described that society in a passag
that is pure Nietzsche:

Society is the form in which the fact of mutual dependence for

the sake of life and nothing else assumes public significance and
where the activities connected with sheer survival are permitted
to appear in public.18

In retrospect The Human Condition seems a work that is high

suggestive at the margins of its chosen problems and irrelevant, even
misleading, at its center. There are marvelously perceptive comme
about the nature of action and of work, but the main construct, "
political," could not carry the burden assigned to it. This was beca
two of the most fundamental political problems were either ignor
or treated superficially: power and justice. Power, she declared, "exist
only in its actualization." It "springs up between men when they a
together and vanishes the moment they disperse . . . Power is to
astonishing degree independent of material factors . . .""
This formulation was fully consistent with her discussion of work,
labor, technology, and private property which never succeeded
grasping the basic lesson taught not only by Marx but by the classica

17 The Human Condition, p. 77.

18 Ibid., p. 46.
19 The Human Condition, p. 200.

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 10 SHELDON S. WOLIN

economists as well, that

productivity, and consum
ongoing relationships in
cumulative, and inequal
grosser and ever more sop
contains no inherent prin
absence of the devoted lab
it would have ever acquir
at all; it simply did not f
as the main objective of
Arendt's silence about j
omission: the state. Tha
discussing the state is per
As is well-known, the con
until the early 16th centu
allowed her attention to
itself to be treated in dram
to institutional constraint
and to the dependence of
the modern state appea
power, the actor anticipat
structuralist critique: the
state has even more imp
represents not only the
history, and it not only d
affection, from its subj
requires - enormous rev
a huge military establishm
a vast bureaucracy, and
legitimation upon dema
"democratic state" has become a contradiction in terms.

* * *

On Revolution (1963) saw Arendt exchanging

for the early American republic, the agon
revolutionary of 1776, and Pericles for J
categories developed in The Human Condition were retained,
particularly the dichotomy between the "political" and the "social"
with its anti-democratic and even anti-political implications. Now,

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Hannah Arendt: Democracy and The Political 11
however, the opposition between the political and the social w
developed by means of a contrast between the two great 18th centu
revolutions, the American, which was guided by an authentic politi
impulse, and the French, which catalyzed the "many" who, si
antiquity, had remained outside history, that is, the history
memorable actions. The French Revolution marked the moment when
those who had been hidden away in the lower depths of society had
suddenly erupted. ". . . this multitude, appearing for the first time in
broad daylight, was actually the multitude of the poor and the
downtrodden, whom every century before had hidden in darkness and
shame."20 It was as though, she continued, "the slaves and resident
aliens [of antiquity], who formed the majority of the population without
ever belonging to the people, had risen and demanded an equality of
rights."21 Themselves preoccupied with their "needs," they generated
a type of physical "necessity" from their own "misery" and unleashed
it upon public space. Thus out of a primal necessity revolution emerged,
not as the inspired action of a desperate people unable to secure redress
for their grievances, but as an "irresistible process," a necessity so
overpowering as to defy human control, and hence signifying - as
necessity always does - the denial of freedom.22
In the American Revolution, she maintained, "the exact opposite
took place."23 The Americans conducted a genuinely political
revolution, one that "concerned not the order of society but the form
of government." Among the reasons for the difference, as Tocqueville
had argued before her, was nature's bounty rather than colonial virtue.
Although there was "poverty," there was little of the "misery" and
"want" that would later goad the sansculottes to revolt. At the same
time there was just the right amount of deprivation to discourage
improper political aspirations. The majority of colonists, she noted
approvingly, being occupied with "continuous toil," "would [be]
automatically exclude(d) . . . from active participation in
government."24 Acknowledging that while misery may not have been
the lot of the white majority, it may have been the experience of the
black slaves, she insisted that the main point was that "the social
question" was absent from revolutionary America "and with it, the
most powerful and perhaps the most devastating passion motivating
20 On Revolution, p. 41.
21 Ibid., p. 33.
22 Ibid., pp. 33, 41-44.
23 Ibid.. d. 44.
24 On Revolution, p. 63.

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 12 SHELDON S. WOLIN

revolutionaries, the passi

miserable that the politic
sympathetic ears in Europe because moderns had come to feel
compassion, not because there was any widespread belief that social
and economic opportunities ought to be open to all. "The game of
status-seeking," she wrote in a passage that is simply historically untrue,
". . . was entirely absent from the society of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. . . ,"26 And with a fine Nietzschean aside she
chided contemporary social scientists for believing that "the lower
classes have, as it were, a right to burst with resentment, greed, and
envy. . . ,"27
Although Arendt was full of praise for the Framers of the American
Constitution for having succeeded in giving lasting institutional form
to revolution, something which most modern revolutionists have failed
to do, her account of the Constitution displayed again her antipathy
toward material questions, in this case, the economic motives of the
Founding Fathers, even though many of the founders were not hesitant
to argue them openly in public space, as it were. By ignoring these
matters her account of the Constitution left uninterpreted the drive for
centralization, the determination to curb the power of the colonial
legislatures, and the Hamiltonian vision of a national economy presided
over by a strong state. Her failure to recognize that the Founders were
more concerned to halt the democratic social movement that had
captured some of the state legislatures and initiated economic legislation
favoring small farmers and that their own plans included a capitalist's
version of the social question returns to undercut the proposals for a
new conception of the political - or rather, a new embodiment -
advanced toward the end of On Revolution.
She criticized the Framers for having introduced a system of
representative government which meant that "the people are not
admitted to the public realm." She charged the Constitution with having
caused the withering of the "revolutionary spirit" because it had failed
"to incorporate the townships and the town-hall meetings, the original
springs of all political activity in the country" into the new political
order.28 Her charge, however, merely accused the Framers of what they
openly avowed. The new national government, as its architects made
clear, had to break the monopoly which State and local institutions

25 Ibid., pp. 66, 90.

26 Ibid., pp. 66-67.
27 Ibid.. p. 67.
28 On Revolution, pp. 241-242.

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Hannah Arendt: Democracy and The Political 13
had on the affections of the people.29 Incorporating local institutio
was not something the Founders failed to do; it ran counter to the
political vision. They made the Constitution into a triumph of stat
sponsored capitalism, an elite version of the "social question" whic
included the defense of property rights, the encouragement of a nationa
economy through currency reforms, tariffs, taxation, commercia
policies, state subsidies, a military power able to extend American
commerce, and an enlightened bureaucracy to nurture infant industrie
The vision of the Founders was national rather than local, expansiv
rather than stationary. Consequently, for Arendt to praise the Founder
for having kept the rabble and their social concerns from invading publ
space, and then to tax that same elite for being insensitive to the value
of local participatory institutions was to strain at a gnat and swallo
the camel.
Arendt's criticism of the Framers was an expression of her unease
at the spectacle presented by modern representative government and
its system of political parties: they had made politics the monopoly of
a professional elite and closed it off to natural elites who are inspired,
not by careers, but by genuine love of politics. Her solution was to
resurrect an obscure proposal advanced by Jefferson in a private letter
written nearly a quarter century after the ratification of the
Constitution. Jefferson had envisaged a system of "elementary
republics" located in the wards, counties, and states and forming a
"gradation of authorities," each with a share of power, that would
serve to check and balance each other.30 Although Jefferson's proposal
suffered from some of the same shortcomings as ancient Greek
democracy in making no provision for the political admission of women,
slaves, and aliens, there were genuinely democratic features to it. "Every
man in the State" was to be "an acting member of the Common
government, transacting in person" according to "his competence."
Each would thus feel himself to be "a participator in the government
of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every
day

Arendt then proceeded to integr

tradition of participation which e
Committees of Correspondence du
forward to the revolutionary counci

29 See Hamilton's remarks in Federalist 27

30 On Revolution, d. 258.
31 Cited, On Revolution, p. 257.

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 14 SHELDON S. WOLIN

up spontaneously with t
in the French Revolutio
revolutions of 1905 and
And doubtless she would
contemporary Poland.
Most of these examples f
and spontaneous appeara
unmarred by social and
But granting their impor
their existence casts doubt
effects of the social quest
ordinary citizens to act in
were mass societies, how
the deadening effects o
consumer society and to
action? How is it possible,
the masses at bay and, th
as "the political elite of t
the question, but it is n
although it involves get
repeatedly found to be su
to social historians and cu
are not without rich cultu
capacity to act ceases to
the concept of the "mas
primarily an intellectua
resentment at what capit
It restricts "high culture"
to protect the few from
Arendt's indifference, to
and poor citizens produ
historical meaning of the
one of the most importan
popular understanding o
equality, justice, comm
contribution of Western
and poor people is almos
a first hand experience in
to sacrifice and share, t
promises but commitmen
conscience's sake, and, not least, to found new communities.

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Hannah Arendt: Democracy and The Political 15
At the end of On Revolution there was an element of patho
Arendt's project. Beyond extolling the value of these new form
elitism, nothing is said about how they might be maintained be
institutionalizing them would destroy the spontaneity which w
essential element of their political authenticity. Their appeara
therefore, is accepted as one would accept the inexplicable work
of Divine Grace. These elites are "chosen by no one," they const
themselves. "Politically they are the best and it is the task of g
government and the sign of a well-ordered republic to assure them
their rightful place in the public realm." "To be sure," she added
recognition of these elites "would spell the end of general suffr
for recognition would mean that the elite had won "the right to be h
in the conduct of the business of the republic," and that they
"for more than their private happiness." As for those who wou
excluded, they had not only chosen their fate by remaining pas
but they had, unconsciously, affirmed "one of the most impor
negative liberties we have enjoyed since the end of the ancient wor
freedom from politics."32
This last remark illustrates Arendt's profound equivocality ab
politics, an equivocality that led her to welcome spontaneous pol
action but to distrust action when the stakes became so large
threaten to incorporate the concerns that are located closer to or w
"private" life. She wanted a pure form of politics, one that w
consistent with the claim that "power is to an astonishing deg
independent of material factors."33 Political institutions, she declar
flatly, should be made independent of economic forces.34 It wa
vision of pure politics that led her during the late 1960s to oppose
Viet Nam War, to defend civil disobedience, to criticize the involve
of universities in the war business, and, within limits, to welcome
aspects of the student protest movements. In all of these commitm
one can see a common element: a support of actions that were prim
political, or at least could be seen that way, and without econ
motives or broad social aims.

* * *

In closing let me offer some remarks intende

an alternative, democratic conception of the polit

32 On Revolution, p. 284. See also Crises of the Republic,

33 The Human Condition, p. 200.
34 Crises of the Republic, pp. 212-213.

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16 SHELDON S. WOLIN

a conception look like?

arbitrary construction? O
political and the idea of
meanings as to seem alm
relationship between th
political order that would
the wealthy. Marx expre

... it is evident that all

their truth, and for that
are not democracy.35

Marx's point can be rende

insofar as it claims to be
entire community and no
class or group: this is the
in question takes a particu
wealthy or by corporatio
in the interests of a part o
principle of the good of
democratic state has the p
It might be added that m
present, have accepted t
conclusion. They have ac
a distinct kind of associa
the contributions, sacrif
bent their ingenuity to
(whether kings, aristocrat
to use collective power f
population at large the v
These are, however, ma
help to identify correct
common well-being is the
political action, it does no
that the common well-bei
nature of the common w
or "created" ? and, if so,
good, or equivocal, even ir
35 Critique of Hegel's 'Philosop
p. 31.

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Hannah Arendt: Democracy and The Political 17

for the political to come into being so that the common well-b
becomes possible and how do these conditions entail democrac
We can begin not by ignoring the state but by avoiding the error
assuming that the state is identical or coterminous with the pol
The state is a modern phenomenon and its raison d'être was to deve
or better, to capitalize the power of society - the power reside
the human activities, relationships, and transactions that sustai
and its changing needs. The state became a coercive agency, decl
and enforcing law, punishing miscreants of all descriptions,
systematizing taxation, encouraging commerce and manufacture in the
direction of national economies, conducting diplomacy, waging war,
and seeking empire. Its characteristic form of action is the decision
which it * 'makes" with relentless regularity; its typical expression is the
announcement of a "policy," and its mode of governance ranges from
inducements to force.
The appearance of the state signifies that surplus power is available,
that collective life has succeeded in producing more power than the daily
needs of the members require. The existence of surplus power is a sign
that the political has come into being in the common life that makes
the state possible. Common life resides in the cooperation and
reciprocity that human beings develop in order to survive, meet their
needs, and begin to explore their capacities and the remarkable world
into which they have been cast. The political emerges as the shared
concerns of human beings to take care of themselves and the part of
their world that they claim as their lot. The political emerges, in the
literal sense, as a "culture," that is, a cultivating, a tending, a taking
care of beings and things. The common life and the political culture
emerge to the accompaniment of power. Shared concerns do not
eliminate the need for power; they depend upon it. This was partly
glimpsed in a remark by the late Roland Barthes:

One must naturally understand political in its deeper meaning,

as describing the whole of human relations in their real social
structure, in their power of making the world.36

There is, of course, an irony here in that the skills of social

cooperation, which human beings acquire through experience and
apprenticeship, and which enable them to settle their existence,
eventually are made to work against them. Their skill produces more
36 Mythologies, tr. Annette Lavers (New York, 1972), p. 143.

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 18 SHELDON S. WOLIN

power than they need. Su

more of the future and
projects. The dynamics o
surplus power then gets
language for talking abou
Surplus then becomes th
and administered in the f
deployment of power co
of this the political, wh
involvements, has disapp
The loss of the politica
experience rather than a
The thing about experie
political experience is tha
it. The nature of the polit
not by unique deeds wh
others, but by rediscover
political is based on thi
capacity to share, to shar
being is the natural found
displays common elemen
the cooperative undertak
are not equal in power o
is crucial. The developm
depends requires differe
differences which are int
stated somewhat differen
common being. It is, as Hannah Arendt so often and eloquently
reminded us, a being that is capable of expressing the most remarkable
and glorious diversity. That diversity has important implications on how
power is exercised democratically.
Each of us is a contributor to the generation of power without which
human life cannot endure. The problem of the political is not to clear
a space from which society is to be kept out but it is rather to ground
power in commonality while reverencing diversity - not simply
respecting difference. Diversity cannot be reverenced by bureaucratic
modes of decision-making. Diversity is the nightmare of bureaucracy.
The bureaucrat's response to it is either to invent another classification
or, in the corporate world, to manufacture 57 varieties. The mode of
action that is consonant with equality and diversity is deliberation.

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Hannah Arendt: Democracy and The Political 19
Deliberation means to think carefully. We must think carefully because
what is at stake is the exercise of human power. To exercise power
democratically, that is, with the fullest possible participation by equals,
far from being an exercise of crude mass power, is the most sensitive
way of handling power. Democratic deliberation implicates our common
being in decisions which are bound, in a complex society, to threaten
harm to our diverse beings. It requires not that we come to terms with
power - representatives and bureaucrats can do that for us - but that
we face it.

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